The clash of titans is just a few hours away from us. Indian Premier League is in the 1th year and excitement is as usual too much.
Chennai Super Kings and Royal Challengers Bangalore will go one on one against each other in the opening match of this season. This battle of these two southern states is also called the southern derby. Barring the first two seasons of IPL, every season had the first match between last year’s winner and some other team. This year is also the same, CSK is the defending champions this time. 5 out of 9 times defending champions have won the first match.
TEAM ANALYSIS
Before the 2019 auction, CSK released Mark Wood, Kanishk Seth, and Kshitiz Sharma. They bought Ruturaj Gaikwad and Mohit Sharma in the auction. Mohit Sharma has played for CSK in 2013-15. Ruturaj Gaikwad is an uncapped Indian player.
RCB, on the other hand, released Quinton de Kock, Mandeep Singh, Brendon McCullum, Chris Woakes, Corey Anderson and Sarfaraz Khan. They bought Shimron Hetmyer, Devdutt Padikkal, Shivam Dube, Heinrich Klassen, Gurkeerat Singh, Himmat Singh, and Paras Ray Barman.
Both the team has the core players from last season. CSK specifically can come out with the same team.
Bowling has always been a weak point of Royal Challengers Bangalore. This season the team looks perfectly balanced as they have some quality fast bowlers along with spinners. Batting has never been an issue for them and the current line up also shows the batting strength of this team. Marcus Stoinis and Nathan Coulter-Nile will not play this match as they will join the RCB camp after 31st March due to Australia-Pakistan ODIs.
Chennai Super Kings are the defending champions. Their bowling especially fast bowling lacks experience. This is because of the injury to Lungi Ngidi. They don’t have a proper fast bowler who has a lot of international experience. This issue might not come in the first few matches but it will surely emerge in the later part of the tournament.
Probable Playing XI
CSK: Shane Watson, Faf du Plessis, Suresh Raina, Ambati Raydu, MS Dhoni (C & WK), Dwayne Bravo, Kedar Jadhav, Ravindra Jadeja, Mitchell Santner/Imran Tahir, Shardul Thakur, Deepak Chahar/Mohit Sharma
RCB: Parthiv Patel (WK), Moeen Ali, Virat Kohli (C), AB de Villiers, Shimron Hetmyer, Gurkeerat Singh, Pawan Negi/Washington Sundar, Yuzvendra Chahal, Tim Southee, Umesh Yadav, Navdeep Saini/Mohammed Siraj
